The Rising Dead
After the onset of World War IV the earth’s population is reduced to armies of the undead after biological warfare has caused the dead to rise. In an effort to save America’s important people, the President and his staff are packed on a plane to be flown to an underground nuclear (Nuculer) fallout shelter in Guantonimo Bay. Unfortunately for those aboard, the plane crashes before it arrives. Left with a handful of survivors and a handful +1 of now zombified plane passengers, they now must fight there way on foot to the fallout shelter. Led by Mr. Blake, the Special Forces agent assigned to protect the mission, he takes the first lady and her first children under his wing as they fight their way to the shelter.
In theory, this sounds like a pretty good flick. Zombies as a result of World War IV, a secret mission to fly the president and his VIP’s to a remote facility, and hey…zombies! Unfortunately, the good ideas never evolve past the theory stage and what we get is a convoluted turd set to give you either a head ache or a good night’s sleep, all depending on your tolerance for crap.
You see, I praised the basic plot up above there and I stand by it. Unfortunately, I had to gather that plot from IMDb as when the themes are put into play they are near impossible to follow and really do not come across at all throughout the entirety of the movie. Filled in primarily through Mr. Blake’s echo-y internal monologues he manages to dump plot points in large chunks, freeing the actors up to run about on screen stiltedly running from zombies, all while delivering their lines in the finest of high school acting abilities!
There is some gore here. Not much, not necessarily well employed; but it’s there. Again, the intentions were solid here but when you can see that their main effects medium is green screening holes in zombie heads and buckets of red food coloring the gore is more of the humorous variety. Don’t get me wrong, I can love and appreciate even the woodiest of Ed Wood style effects. When there is a story, some hammy acting or something else interesting going on in the background, the cheesy effects add a certain charm and quality to a z-grade horror flick. Unfortunately for The Rising Dead, there’s nothing else going in the background to bolster the charm for these effects; they’re just plain cheesy.
Mr. Blake deserves some special recognition here, as he and his director brother are the only two people they’ve bothered to credit on the IMDb listing! Granted this is somewhat understandable as the majority of The Rising Dead is Mr. Cousins stomping around in all his manliness throwing zombies about and hitting them in the back with axe handles, all while delivering wooden internal monologues. However, how can we forget to give credit to say…Mr. Blake’s hooker esque wife and her magic mini skirt that was oh so tight, yet she still managed to seemingly stash half a survival kit inside? Or how about our first lady who didn’t quite know what to do with her arms while speaking and spent most of her time DELIVERING LINES LOUDLY AND DISTINCTLY so that we hung on every word. (Watch out Billy Shatner, you may soon be unthroned!)
In the end, I had marginal hopes for a good low budget movie with a post apocalyptic flare. What I got was a slight rash and an undeniable wish for my two hours back. When I, the ‘watcher of crap so you don’t have to’ finds himself a eying the counter on the front of the player and exclaiming repeatedly ‘Jesus Christ WHEN DOES IT END!’; you know you have yourself a special pile-o-shit in the direct to DVD bin.
1 even I know you don’t wear white socks with a black suit’s out of 5
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